The Philippines: Past and Present (Volume 2 of 2)Worcester, Dean C. (Dean Conant)
History
The Philippines: Past and Present (Volume 2 of 2)
Worcester, Dean C. (Dean Conant)
Philippines; Philippines -- History -- 1898-1946
School gardening was introduced at an early date. This course now
includes the school garden, in which each pupil has his own individual
three and a fourth by thirteen foot plot, and home gardens which
are not less than four times the size of the school plot. By this
arrangement eighty per cent of the garden work is carried on at the
homes of the pupils or on vacant lots under the direct supervision
of teachers.
In the beginning much of the school agricultural work was not very
practical. Teachers who themselves knew nothing about agriculture
were wedded to the small "individual plot" idea, which I regret
to say still continues to prevail in some of the schools. On a bit
of ground about three feet by six the pupil might plant one tomato
plant, one camote vine, one grain of rice, two or three eggplants and
a flowering plant or two. This gave him helpful open-air exercise,
but taught him nothing about agriculture. Weeks after the school year
had opened I once visited a number of school gardens in Mindoro and
found that several of them consisted of rectangular plots marked off
on solid sod with shells picked up on the beach! On my return I told
the director of education that three active hens would have done far
more toward preparing soil for cultivating than had all the children
in these towns.
These conditions have changed rapidly since the adoption, three
years ago, of a definite policy of agricultural education consisting
of standard school and home gardens and farm schools for Filipinos;
and large communal tracts of land cultivated at the Settlement Farm
Schools for non-Christians.
Lieutenant-Governor Frederick Lewis of Bukidnon was as deeply disgusted
with the former play agriculture as was I. Exercising, I fear, rather
arbitrary authority over the local Filipino teachers, but with my
connivance, he persuaded them to turn their active, strong schoolboys
loose on large tracts of the beautiful prairie land found near almost
every school in the sub-province, and raise crops. As a result of this
experiment, first carried out at Tankulan, each boy took home a bushel
or two of unhulled rice. Parents were enthusiastic, and so were the
boys. From this small beginning came the so-called farm-settlement
schools, of which there are thirty-eight among the non-Christian
tribes. On large, well-fenced, carefully cultivated tracts of ground
the schoolboys grow camotes, upland rice, corn, bananas, cowpeas,
beans, pineapples, eggplants, arrowroot, and in some cases, cacao
and coffee. Instead of learning what individual plants will do when
grown quite by themselves under abnormal conditions, they learn to
produce real crops. They become interested in the introduction of
American sweet potatoes in place of the less nutritious camotes,
in the selection of seed corn, in the generalization of the better
varieties of bananas, and in other practical matters. Incidentally
they largely furnish the school food supply.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account